A dearth of leadership talent is wreaking havoc on the Jewish day school system as schools find it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain qualified heads.
The American Jewish community is one of the most learned and sophisticated communities in Jewish history – in everything except Jewish texts. As Jews, we are illiterate.
Last year, Deena Messinger considered leaving her job as a kindergarten teacher at Sinai Akiva Academy in Westwood to teach at a secular private school or a public school.
Several times during my visit with Rabbi Karmi Gross at Maimonides Academy, coaches and kids came to pull balls out of the corner of his tiny office in a prefab building smack in the middle of the schoolyard.
As soon as word spread about last month\’s $45 million gift to Jewish day schools in Boston, one question arose for parents and educators around the city: What about Los Angeles?
Amid the troubling statistics of the 2000 National Jewish Population Survey, there is one genuinely positive trend. The percentage of children in Jewish day schools is the highest it\’s ever been. Twenty-nine percent of Jewish children today have attended a day school at some point.
Many Jewish parents have recognized that a day school education can give their kids the strong identity and sense of rootedness that they need to navigate an increasingly complex world.
There is no summertime lull at schools for Jewish education.
Even as day campers toting towel-stuffed beach bags invade day schools and synagogue religious classrooms, administrators are spending their summer scrambling to fill staff vacancies for September, at a time when qualified Judaic and Hebrew instructors are difficult to find.
The shortage stems from an increasing demand statewide for public school teachers, a shift in Israel\’s economy and what some suggest is a failure of planning by Reform and Conservative movements.
In our hardwired global village, the old curse \”May you live in interesting times,\” has particular resonance. For local educators, the recent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians have made these past few weeks interesting times indeed. As events continue to unfold thousands of miles away, the conflict has been an ongoing topic in Southern California\’s Jewish day schools.
Once again we are faced with the annual dilemma of what to doabout Halloween. Should we let the kids \”trick or treat\” or not? Weknow that Halloween is not a Jewish holiday; that is not the problem.We celebrate Thanksgiving and Presidents Day, both American holidayswhich reflect good values. Halloween, on the other hand, does notreflect a value system that we would like to pass on to our children.It focuses on taking, greed and violence, not to mention theconsequences, a nasty trick, played on those who refuse to give.
Quick, what\’s a kosher animal with horns that can be used to makea shofar?\n\nUh, well, everyone knows the answer to that. A ram, right?\n\nOK. Right. But name another kosher animal with horns good formaking a shofar.\n\nBzzzzzz! Your time is up.\n\nBut the several thousand Los Angeles-area day- and Hebrew-schoolchildren participating in Chabad\’s Traveling Shofar Factory know theanswer: The long, spiraling horns of the male kudu, a type of Africanantelope, are often used to make the shofarim employed in Sephardicsynagogues.
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